Party on, Garth

Not since the medical-marijuana movement have toga wearers heard news this good: Slowly yet surely, the fast food industry is making it possible to catch a buzz with your burger or burrito.

Those of you just deplaning from the space shuttle might’ve missed the news that Burger King will serve beer in its new Whopper Bar concept, an upscale riff on the chain’s usual fast-food emporiums. The kegger will start at the branch under development in South Beach, Miami’s own little stretch of Gomorrah, and spread to outlets like the one planned for New York’s Times Square, according to press reports.

The hubbub suggested that the fast-food world has never tried such a thing before. Yet a number of other chains had beaten BK to the bottle opener. Prominent among them is Starbucks, which is selling beer and wine at its new “neighborhood” stores, the individually named cafes that call to mind eccentrics in berets reading poetry.

Even more ambitious is the bartending of Baja Fresh, the fast-casual burrito chain that’s now offering margaritas in a few outlets. The stores also offer bottled beers, as competitors like Chipotle have done since their start.

The slow seep of alcohol into fast food has been happening for years. Three decades ago, a point of distinction for Taco Cabana was selling margaritas through the drive-thru, and the regional chain still sells a frozen version by the glass and in pitchers. If memory serves me correctly, McDonald’s even tried beer at an outlet in the Miami airport back in the ‘80s.

But the trend is particularly intriguing now because it shifts fast-feeders closer to casual dining, a stretch of quicksand during much of the Great Recession. Why wade into that marshland when the casual chains were scrambling not long ago to recast themselves as fast-food places that happened to use silverware? They certainly narrowed the gap between their prices and what you’d be charged at a grab-and-go burger shop. Ditto for the menu items they featured.

So why inch onto ground the traditional occupants are forsaking to some degree? Maybe the seam between the sectors is the place to be. That, after all, is the turf targeted by fast-casual chains.

Yet they’ve not fared as well during the downturn as their conventional quick-serve predecessors. No, it seems more a matter of pushing out the edges of a brand’s market, regardless of what sector serves as its base. Even more so than a year ago, chains of all stripes are trying to hold their traditional turf while pushing out in slight increments into new territory.

The question is, does that sharpen their appeal or just blur their image?

It’s enough to make you crave a drink.

MIA: Something new

Send out an A.P.B. and snap on the Bat Signal. Some scoundrel has run off with the restaurant industry’s love of innovation. And it looks as if it might be an inside job.

The authorities have their suspicions about the culprits. They’re looking for glassy-eyed numbers fiends who wield machete and scalpel with equal zeal, slashing costs the way hopped-up jungle guides would blaze a trail.

But the real scourges are the accomplices—the CEOs, marketers and ops specialists who know better than to stifle new ideas. Instead of nurturing green shoots, they’re standing by while the bean counters prune anything with an expense. It’d be like a dairy farmer trying to offset a dip in production by feeding the cows less silage.

You can only hope the cut-and-kill mindset will be arrested. Here’re the questions that should be put to the innovation throttlers during the interrogation:

Where are the new concepts? Except for a few upscale riffs on established brands—think The Whopper Bar, Baja Fresh’s new dinner-focused prototype, or Baskin-Robbins’ new cafes—we’ve seen virtually nothing in the way of new restaurant ideas from the chains. That’s an historic shift, especially for casual dining, where the big brands were always scouting the hinterlands for The Next Big Thing.

Everyone agrees that this is an unprecedented time that could forever change the business. Isn’t it foolhardy to think that yesterday’s concepts are going to meet tomorrow’s tastes?

Ironically, we did see a new entrant in the market in early July. Unfortunately, it’s something called Crazy Girls Café, a strip club that also serves food. There’s a novel notion.

Where are the aha! moments? Consider this obvious one: Craft condiments. Soft drinks, a staple of the business, are being reconsidered as the public shifts to options promising more uniqueness, character and quality. Smaller, highly crafted brands are gaining favor.

The same dynamic holds true in the beer business. Would any new restaurant not offer a craft brew today, if not a beer that can only be purchased there?

So why not ketchups and mustards? Why aren’t we seeing the proliferation of high-craft selections with different flavors and consistencies? There’s a burger boom underway. Why not a ketchup craze?

For a glimpse of what might have been, look at the barbecue-sauce and marinade sections of your local grocery. There are more options than what you’ll find in the salad dressing aisle.

The exception that underscores the non-trend is Ketchup, the multi-outlet concept of The Dolce Group in California. The restaurant features five house-made ketchups to accompany its heavily local menu of comfort foods with contemporary twists.

Where’s the urgency in casual dining to come up with something new? The innovations of the last two years could be summed up as sliders, $9.95 filets, micro-brews, mini-desserts and better full-sized burgers. Whoa.

Why isn’t the sector at least staying current with the trends? For instance, other than Seasons 52, is any concept addressing the fresh and local trend? Organics? Or even green? Name one chain that’s as active as the fast-feeders are in greening their facilities.

Clearly the economic climate is taking its toll, stifling creativity that could distinguish an operation. But the real lost opportunity may not be evident until conditions improve. By that time, many established brands are going to regret that they weren’t trying yesterday to come up with what’ll fly tomorrow.

Bourbon burgers further blur the lines

Be careful where you stand in today's restaurant market, because the ground appears to be melting. Turf that once defined a segment is oozing into other realms, blurring consumers' perceptions of where they can get a certain product and what they'll likely pay. That's good news if you're a fast-food concept catching consumers on the way down, but more reason to whine and thump your chest if casual dining is the ground you've homesteaded. Witness, for instance, the advent this week of fast-food whiskey--available just as a flavoring at this point.

Ribs or burgers flavored with bourbon or Jack Daniels were once the signatures of casual dining. Indeed, T.G.I. Friday's Jack Daniels grill menu was undoubtedly one of the most successful undertakings of its time.

But as of today you can get a Kentucky Bourbon Burger at Carl's Jr. Yesterday, Burger King unveiled its Bourbon Whopper, one of the new sandwiches showcased at the chain's new Whopper Bar, itself a deliberate encroachment on casual dining's turf.

I don't have the prices of the new burgers, but presumably they're a significant step down from the charge on casual dining menus. It's Carl's Six Dollar Burger mentality, carried to the next logical product.

Then again, turnaround is fair play. One of casual dining's big successes in recent years has been the introduction of sliders, the little burgers that were once a mainstay of the quick-service sector. Now the big fast-food chains like Burger King, Jack in the Box and McDonald's are copying the casual dining specialists who copycatted fast-food brethren like White Castle and Krystal, the originators of sliders.

Similarly, casual dining made a grab for traditional quick-service turf when it moved chain by chain into the take-out market, cleverly differentiated from the fast-food variety by the name "curbside takeaway."

Ironically, if the industry was smart, it'd stop stealing ideas in-house and try to, um, catch some inspiration from today's true foodservice successes, the supermarket/takeout shop hybrids like Tesco's Fresh & Easy and Walmart's Marketside. They've hit on some Harry Potter formulas that could make life extremely difficult for restaurants, regardless of whether they're competing on price, convenience or even quality. They're the innovators whose ideas should be plundered--er, complimented, I meant to say, as in imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.